Although expendable thermoplastic grocery bags, packaging materials, cups and containers are preferred by consumers and suppliers alike for a wide variety of reasons, concern is mounting over the disposal of such articles as landfill space becomes increasingly scarce. These articles have been cited as making up a significant portion of our solid waste stream and, as a result of this, greater emphasis is now being placed on the recycling of these materials as an important means of reducing our solid waste load.
One change in recent years is the increased consumer preference for plastic grocery sacks. It has been estimated that plastic grocery sacks account now for at least 60 percent of the grocery sack market. The increase in preference stems from several factors including ease in use for the consumer and lower cost to the provider. Plastic grocery sacks also require one-tenth the landfill space upon disposal therein. However, even more important benefits can be realized when the fact that thermoplastic grocery sacks are recyclable and can be reused to form useful plastic products.
Supermarket chains today, in association with plastic grocery sack producers, have begun programs to collect used plastic sacks for recycling. In the usual case, consumers bring their used sacks back to the store where they were obtained, deposit them in a bin or container designated for that purpose, with the store or chain shipping collected sacks back to a plastic sack producer. There the sacks are shredded, formed into pellets, and can be turned into new products.
Virtually any expendable article produced from thermoplastic materials can be recycled. The success of a recycling program is impacted by a variety of factors, including the cleanliness of the articles collected, whether the collected articles were produced from similar resin; e.g. all linear low density polyethylene, rather than a mix of polyethylene and polystyrene and various economic considerations. For example, if foamed polystyrene cups are collected for recycling, it is important that the contents of the cups are emptied prior to being placed in a recycling station.
To aid in the success of any recycling program, it is desirable that recycling stations be easy to identify, assist the consumer through their design to properly deposit articles therein to assure that the collected articles have the potential for being recycled into high value plastic products, be easy to ship at low freight cost to the recycling station user and perhaps more importantly, be easy to assemble and implement by the station user.
Therefore what is needed is a rack for supporting flexible bags in an open condition for use in the collection of recyclable materials.